


A Boy Not Uncracked.

by orphan_account



Series: A Story not Untold. [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: HP: EWE, M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-11
Updated: 2015-04-11
Packaged: 2018-03-22 08:00:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,382
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3721288
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"No. Please, no. Shhhh. Shhh. Just.. be quiet. I’m pretending you’re someone who cares. Someone who is nice and kind and doesn’t care that not all of my scars are war wounds. Someone who doesn’t call me Potter or Golden boy. Someone who will make me chocolate chip pancakes in the morning. I don’t know. just… someone who cares."</p><p>Follow up to 'A Man Not Unkind' but can be read alone.<br/>-----<br/>Some days, Severus Snape pretends he is kind.<br/>Some days, it is less a lie than others.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Boy Not Uncracked.

Severus Snape is nothing if not a man of routine, and so somewhere in the midst of it all the strangeness escapes him.

Wake up, untangle from limbs, relieve self, brush teeth, make chocolate chip pancakes, leave for work. At work he is as methodical as ever, keeps contracts with Hogwarts, St Mungos, The Werewolf Confederation (headed by Andromeda with Teddy as it's mascot), and still manages to keep his shelves full most days. He breaks exactly 20 minutes for lunch, notice me not spell on the door and unhurried bites of the stew or fish and chips if he feels like splurging. The shop closes at six, it takes another hour to finish up any last brewing that needs to be done and once everything is decanted, utensils clean and cauldrons soaking- he apparates home to make dinner. 

They don't talk about the bad days, about the days the potions explode or the spell on the door is more stinging hex than distraction, but then again the truth is they rarely talk when it's light outside anyway. Silence and assumption have interwoven themselves so thick within his routine that if it weren't for the occasional clipped conversation with customers, most days Severus would forget he has a voice at all.

Some nights he eats alone. This doesn't strike him as strange anymore than the nights that The Boy sits across from him sullenly, or even the ones where The Boy comes in reeking of FireWhiskey that is just as apparent in his new found pleasure in life as it is the smell of his breath. The nights he eats alone he cleans his dishes and magics the left overs into the cold box for another day before sitting in the arm chair to read before bed. On the rare occasion that this is when his companion joins him, The Boy curls up at his knees and when Severus feels the weight settle there he picks up reading out loud mid sentence as if he had been doing it all along. If he is there for dinner, Severus washes the dishes while The Boy dries them before they sit in front of the fire together, Severus's arms wrapped tight about too thin shoulders, every breath forcing his chest against hard back. He doesn't speak those nights, instead chooses to listen to the ragged breaths, focus on how his own exhales steady the other's. If The Boy is having one of his better days, they curl up on opposite sides of the bed at first, though Severus has yet to wake up without at least an arm slung over his bedmate. When the nightmares seem imminent even with the lights still on, he settles most of his weight on the smaller man, careful to keep the weight he can supported by the bed instead. He isn't sure that the Boy appreciates this effort, but he's trying to be kind in the more normative sense of the word.

There are nights that The Boy doesn't come home until late and when Severus relaxes enough to unclench his wand from beneath the pillow he turns over and accepts the warm body that presses close. Sometimes, when they are like this, cloaked in darkness and under the heavy blankets The Boy finally speaks. It's the only time he speaks pleasantly, where he fills Severus in with the bits and pieces of his day knowing that the older man won't comment, won't ask questions when the story suddenly changes. Here in this dark room The Boy sheds his armor and says he feels at home, clutches at his arms and says he feels safe. The other times he speaks aren't so pleasant. Liquor makes him crude to the point that the last time he'd come home drunk, Severus hadn't waited for the jubilance to fade to mockery or anger- had pushed off from the table so hard that the chair splintered from the force before screaming.

"Get out, Potter! I'm not dealing with this charade any longer. Go home to your bloody friends if you have any left, go back to knockturn alley or go sleep in the gutter for all I care, but get out of my house!"

He'd slammed the bedroom door behind him, locked it with every warding spell that he knew and didn't eat breakfast the next day, didn't go to work. Just spent every waking hour lacing the house with booby traps and nasty curse work. He had been particularly proud of the one by the door way which would leave the cursee with a case of nasty boils in a very unfortunate place that would be intolerable within a few minutes. Another by the fireplace would steal whoever's voice and the only way to get it back would be to give up their fertility. 

Severus's increasingly inventive ward work turned out to be all for naught. In the dead of the night a terrible screeching sound had encased the house and when Severus had opened the door wand at the ready, there he'd been. Standing over the now fixed kitchen chair, looking thinner and paler than he had just three days prior. It had been enough to make Severus drop his guard, reach out in concern and The Boy had taken advantage of that, had rushed forward slamming Severus back against the wall.

"You don't get to throw me out anymore." 

There'd been no struggle, not at first. There was no point in arguing when he hadn't eaten since that night, hadn't gone to work, hadn't done anything but curse his own living space. The man currently hoisting him off the floor may have been sick, Severus might have been telling himself that he allowed the intruder in his house out of guilt for kidnapping The Boy the first time, but there was no more denying that their routine helped him as well. Even if he didn't understand why.

"You don't get to call me Potter anymore." 

Another shake, Snape's head throbbing from the force of hitting the wall a second time and it was enough to make him angry. Severus had already lived in a household with one drunk, and he had no intention of living with another and he had every right to protect his space. Even if he had originally kidnapped Potter. When he'd finally lurched into action it had been with a cheap shot, but the gryffindor had seen it coming quick enough to block the knee to the groin but not enough to keep Snape from twisting out when he goes to protect himself. Once he'd been free from the fall he'd taken the advantage and almost as soon as it'd began, his former student, the boy who had won the war against all odds, lay panting beneath him in a odd, not quite facsimile of their first night. And just like then, every time The Boy went to struggle, Severus had just pressed down harder until he'd eventually quietened. As the anger fled, the position slowly morphed from Severus pinning him down, to the Potions Master laying with his head on the gryffindor's chest, uncaring if his weight was too much, unwilling to think too much about the situation any longer.

That night- they'd slept on the floor. That morning, he'd made pancakes while The Boy made him lunch for the first time. It'd been over three months and the gryffindor hadn't come home smelling of liquor since. Shows up at the shop religiously at noon and stays for no longer than necessary and makes the silent promise that he will be home before nightfall. In return Severus never utters words that start with P in his presence, quietly slips healing potions into the pancake batter but never mentions the bruises that he still comes in with some days. Can't bring himself to ask what The Boy wants to be called or where he goes during the day. Because it'd break their strange silence, break the routine he has finally settled back into, because maybe he'd rather not know the origins of the things he fixes for more reasons than he cares to contemplate.

Besides, The Boy had called his silence Kind, hadn't he? and Severus is just doing his best to pretend after all.

**Author's Note:**

> I haven't written in forever because I got a respiratory infection and then I just.. have been dealing with mental health bullshit.
> 
> I..... am now overly paranoid about the tenses making sense. I prefer present tense with past tense to show well.... past acts. and I have rewritten pieces of this multiple times and I'm done. because if I keep on, I'm never going to post anything again at this point.
> 
> aaaaaand it's one am. yep. posting it rather than editing it because if I edit it in the morning I'll probs just delete it.


End file.
